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He expects the game to be released at the end of 2023.
Following BioWare's announcement of Dragon Age: Dreadwolf completing its Alpha development milestone, former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah released a video where he explained what it means for the game.
Darrah said that while entering Alpha means completing a checklist that consists of a combination of what EA and BioWare want to see, he has his own idea of what it implies.
"For me, Alpha is more about the feeling on the project. This is the point at which the game shifts from starting to get ready to ship into actually starting the process of shipping. I’ve called it the point at which the project is ‘open for test’. ... You open up the floodgates for testing. Everything is open to have a bug filed against it," he said.
At this stage, testing stops being isolated, and developers start testing actual combats, plots, and missions. Many elements are still not complete, and although the main components should already exist, some assets might change in the future. Additionally, during Alpha, design bugs start outstripping programming bugs as "you’re shifting from testing a piece of software to testing a piece of media."
"This is the game’s shape, and now you get to finish filling it in," Darrah continued. Polishing, combat balance, and a lot of optimization happen at this point. "This is when that testing starts in earnest."
Alpha testing is a great milestone for developers, but when is the game going to come out? After all, it's been 8 years since the previous installment Inquisition was released. Darrah thinks we shouldn't expect Dreadwolf before Q2 of FY 2024 (July-September 2023), the third quarter (October-December 2023) seems even more likely as EA wouldn't want to compete with sports titles launched in Q2.
He also mentioned there will probably be some kind of announcement at The Game Awards in December. Maybe we'll finally see a gameplay trailer then, only time will tell.
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